XTBG has newly founded a research group for energy plants in April. Dr. Fang Zhen of McGill University is appointed as the principal investigator (PI) of the group.

    The main tasks of the research group are to study and develop a complete set technology of energy plant propagation and large-scale plantation, to probe into the key technology of improving oil productive capacity through application of bioengineering techniques, and to strive for selecting and developing one or two plant species into large-scale cultivation in 5 years.